It already feels like the Orioles are teetering on the edge of the abyss. That’s being dramatic, of course. They’ve only played five games out of 162, which is 3.1% of a baseball season. If the Orioles went 2-3 over any random stretch in June or July, no one would blink at that. But here at the start of the year, when there’s nothing else that’s happened yet and it all feels connected to the same malaise from last year, it’s bad.
Add to this Zach Eflin’s probably-season-ending injury from Tuesday
night already taxing the starting pitching depth, and a bullpen that pretty much nobody believed in having some anticipated problems (Yaramil Hiraldo) and some less anticipated ones (Tyler Wells) and it’s a recipe for bad feelings.
Win today to avoid the sweep by Texas and the Orioles are 3-3 and that will stave off some misery. If they have more problems and fall to 2-4, then every concern will be one game closer to being solidified and the team will be starting to dig its way into a hole it will need to escape from. As we know from last year, the deeper the hole gets, the harder it is to address that later.
At least it’s Trevor Rogers day. Hopefully that turns out to be a good thing.
Orioles lineup
- Taylor Ward – DH
- Gunnar Henderson – SS
- Pete Alonso – 1B
- Samuel Basallo – C
- Coby Mayo – 3B
- Dylan Beavers – LF
- Colton Cowser – RF
- Leody Taveras – CF
- Jeremiah Jackson – 2B
It’s the first start of the year for Taveras.
The young 4-5-6 hitters in today’s lineup have all not yet done much at the plate in 2026. Hopefully they can flip that around some today.
Rangers lineup
- Brandon Nimmo – DH
- Wyatt Langford – CF
- Corey Seager – SS
- Jake Burger – 1B
- Andrew McCutchen – RF
- Danny Jansen – C
- Josh Jung – 3B
- Ezequiel Duran – 2B
- Sam Haggerty – LF
The Orioles batters will be facing Nathan Eovaldi initially. He had a rocky 2026 debut. Maybe they can continue that problem for him. That would be fun for us.
